St. Matthew's Institute (66)

St. Matthew's Church built its first school, then known as St. Matthew's Institute, in 1866. The Christian Brothers conducted a high school for students from throughout the city as well as a parish school. They tried, unsuccessfully, to buy the building from St. Matthew's Church. In 1877, they eventually commissioned Cluss and Frederick Daniel to build a new structure on Vermont Avenue between M and N streets, called St. John's Institute.

From then on, St. Matthew's Institute served only as a parish school before it was finally torn down in 1905. The lot became the site of a $100,000 apartment building.

Cluss's architecture influenced the nearby neighborhood. On K Street, from Thirteenth to Fifteenth streets, he designed one other school, (55), a five unit row house, (37), other single family residences, (39), (43) and (103), and one duplex (78). Within a block of K Street, he also designed a church (5) on Thirteenth Street, a duplex on Fourteenth Street (102) and a house (80) and a hotel (18) on Fifteenth Street.